In this lesson students will examine child labor and the lack of child labor laws especially for Mexican children by exploring images, newspaper articles and factual accounts from primary resource sets. Using student choice, students are able to show their understanding through a student choice project at the end. There is also an extension to another lesson created by a teacher in the Boulder County Latino History Project (BCLHP) who was actually a migrant child worker.

In this lesson students will analyze the characteristics of influential people. The lesson begins with a brainstorm list of influential people in history. Students are then asked to analyze primary sources focused on one of two influential leaders in Boulder County (Esther Blazon or John Martinez). Finally, they will think about where they see themselves in history and create a “Time Magazine Most Influential Person of the Year” cover about their future selves. The assessment will be a written analysis of how the local leaders might be considered influential people in history.

In this lesson students will examine Boulder Latino migrant housing as portrayed in three different primary sources. In this process, students will closely read an oral history, a typed interview, and an oral interview for details related to this housing. Details and specific word choices related to tone and mood will be captured in a note catcher. Finally, students will be asked to choose between two topics and construct an evidenced-based essay.

In this lesson students read news articles about Latinos from local Boulder County news outlets, discuss, and write an essay in order to gain an understanding of the significant roles Latinos played in the history of Boulder County and the discrimination they experienced.

In this lesson students analyze how life experiences shape character, using primary sources from the Boulder County Latino History Project’s primary sources library. The focus is on local Latino Migrant Children. This lesson is part of several designed to be used together or as stand-alone lessons. At the conclusion of the lesson, the student will be able to:

1. Identify at least three examples of how children of migrant workers’ life experiences helped shaped their character,
2. Rank order the life experiences’ impact based on how they would personally react to them,
3. Hypothesize the impact of each of these three life experiences on the child of a migrant worker today.

Teaching Boulder County Latino History is an extension of the Boulder County Latino History Project. This site provides resources for those interested in teaching Boulder County Latino History. The teaching resources are grounded in the books written by CU Boulder’s Distinguished Professor Marjorie McIntosh.

There are three central components to this site. The Lesson Database provides lessons for K-12 teachers. Each lesson uses primary sources and is grounded in the books by Prof. McIntosh. Beyond the curated lessons teachers are encouraged to explore the Primary Source Sets and access the full text of Prof. McIntosh’s books. The book outlines link lesson plans and primary sources to each chapter. Teachers and students are welcome to download all or parts of the books to support their learning.